8. Re-imagining Multispecies Futures in Environmental Education: Children’s Lived Experiences of Intuitive Interspecies Communication with Animals

• In Event: Nature-connectedness and the More-than-human in Environmental Education - Environmental Education SIG Structured Poster Session

Abstract

This study’s primary objective is to explore the experiences of children aged four to ten who experience heightened sensitivity toward animals, and who engage in intuitive interspecies communication (IIC) with animals. The study has three secondary objectives: (1) to understand how the phenomena of IIC takes shape within the lived experiences of sensitive children, (2) to interpret how these interactions contribute to their evolving understandings of self, their bonds with animals, and their relational worlds, (3) to explore relational, intuitive, non-verbal, and interspecies ways of being and knowing, challenging dominant western paradigms that thwart non-dominant onto-epistemologies in educational contexts, and the implications therein for “re-imagining” EE aimed at “equitable futures.”

Guided by an interpretivist paradigm, this research explores the lived experience of children, seeking to understand them from their perspective. This paradigm allows for multiple realities, values meaning making, and emphasizes participant context (Omodan, 2025). Approximately 20 – 30% of children experience heightened sensitivity (Aron et al., 2012; Pluess et al., 2017) thereby a “non-dominant” population. This research focuses on children’s heightened sensitivity toward animals.

Author

• Megan Tucker, Simon Fraser University